The Troubles of Being a Government Employee
by Femme aux Mille Visages
Summary: Harry Potter is Head Auror, and quite satisfied with his life. Although he's currently wrapped up in cases, he likes to think his life is rather stable after the war. That is, until Malfoy gets elected Head Unspeakable, and the Ministry is at once thrown into chaos between the warring department and an international smuggling ring case that they must cooperate on to bring down.
1. Chapter 1

Harry straightened the paperwork on his desk-at least, he pretended to straighten them in the hopes that when Hermione dropped by for lunch his lecture on the informality and clutter of his workplace would be only half as long. He chuckled ruefully. When would Hermione learn that he and Ron weren't really the 'organization' type? They hadn't done it for their OWLs, surely they wouldn't do it as Aurors. But she never did know when to give up. He was brought out of the wanderings of his mind by a sharp knock at the door-three knocks, to be precise.

"Come in," he called, and smiled when he saw a head of bushy hair emerge from the doorframe. Hermione looked tired-there were bags under her eyes, hardly unusual with the way she worked herself half to death-but she was smiling fondly at him. Her eyebrows pinched together when she saw the state of his desk, but at Harry's apologetic look she shook her head and just muttered, "When will you boys ever learn?" and leaned in for a hug. He laughed; truly, he'd never had a friend who could make him feel both quite so guilty and quite so loved at the same time.

"Ah, Hermione, you know we'll never change." She shot him a challenging smirk in response as she hung her cloak on the peg behind the door.

"If you've dotted your i's and crossed your t's..."

"Merlin, Hermione, if you buy me another homework planner, I swear I'll put in a word with Kingsley to get you on suspension..."

"Honestly, Harry, Kingsley wouldn't put me on probation even if you _are _Head Auror and The-Boy-Who-Lived-to-Have-a-Messy-Desk."

"He might if I made him listen to that planner," he muttered, and Hermione giggled.

"I might have been a little excessive about the OWL prep," she admitted rather sheepishly.

"Aha! Alert the Prophet! Floo the Quibbler! Hermione Granger has just admitted to being 'a little excessive' about matters of a studying nature!"

"Oh, stop that, Harry, I thought I was here to have a nice lunch."

He sighed. "I suppose I must be cordial to you, otherwise you'll tell Mrs. Weasley that I haven't been eating enough and I'll have to deal with all of them in my office. Which, as you may have noticed, is not nearly big enough for that kind of a family gathering."

Hermione laughed again, her eyes a little soft.

"We do miss you, Harry, promise you'll be at the Burrow for the next Sunday dinner?" Harry's shoulders slumped in defeat.

"You know I miss seeing you all-but the workload is too much for me to be taking off weekends. We're working on a case with the MLE right now, smuggling illegal potions, we think it might have gone international-" here he paused to resume pushing some papers about "-actually, I wanted you to have a look at this, rather tricky case-"

"_Harry." _Her voice cut across his. "What are the rules of lunch?"

Adopting the affected expression of a well scolded schoolchild (it was alarming, by some accounts, how much Hermione could resemble McGonagall when she wanted to), he responded, "No work at lunch. No going over cases. I have to eat at least two vegetables and one protein. You're not allowed to read or discuss your research."

"Otherwise..." she prompted.

"Otherwise we'd never eat."

"Good Harry. Have a...actually, I'm not quite sure what's for lunch today, it was Ginny's turn to make them. I think it might be pot roast," she said, holding up the two metal containers, turning them this way and that in the candlelight. Harry shrugged.

"Food is food." This announcement was accompanied by a well-timed growl of his stomach, which only further encouraged him to tuck into his lunch. It was indeed pot roast, and excellently made. Mrs. Weasley had made sure that all of her children had learned the basics of cooking before leaving her household, and it seemed that everyone except for Ron and Percy had her knack for it. Ginny had even thrown in a flask of tea for Hermione and one of pumpkin juice for him, which made him smile. He did miss the Weasleys, although seeing Ron and Hermione at work had made the separation easier-but he had responsibilities as Head Auror that were difficult to ignore. _Next week, _he promised himself, and wrote a mental note to put it on the calendar later.

When he and Hermione were about half done with lunch, he interrupted their silent streams of thought.

"So, if we can't talk about work, I suppose we could discuss office gossip?"

Hermione smirked. Clearly, this had been a question she'd wanted him to ask since she'd walked in the door. This in and of itself had raised Harry's suspicions; after all, Hermione was not one for gossip, especially after her experience with Rita Skeeter. Still smiling, she looked up from her lunch and swallowed the mouthful of food she had been chewing at the moment.

"Haven't you heard? There's a new Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries."

"Really? Is it Cho's cousin, you know the one-Ravenclaw a few years ahead of her?"

"It's Malfoy."


	2. Chapter 2

Had Harry still been fifteen years old, he would have promptly spat the mouthful of half-chewed food and pumpkin juice out all over himself and the unsuspecting Hermione. Thankfully for both of them, he was no longer volatile, possessed by Voldemort, or obsessed with Cho Chang, and retained enough of his bodily functions to swallow before gaping. Hermione looked as though she had expected this kind of reaction from Harry, judging by her expression-like she was indulging a small Muggleborn child's incredulity at the discovery of their magic. After a moment's pause, she seemed to have decided that Harry was not, in fact, going to pass away of shock, and proceeded with the rest of her announcement.

"It's rather incredible, too; he'd hardly been working there a month and he was already elected Head Unspeakable. I think the only one who holds a faster record in that department is you, Harry."

Harry was still reeling in shock when he blurted out:

"I am not like Malfoy!"

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"I didn't say you were like Malfoy, Harry-if you'd been paying any attention at all to what I was saying instead of just your name and Malfoy's in the same sentence, you would have known that-I just said that the only one to get a promotion faster in their respective department was you."

"I didn't ask for Head Auror, Hermione! Malfoy grubs at every opportunity for recognition! He probably bought his way on out of desperation-just like the House Quidditch team!"

"Really? I wouldn't have thought so. It's entirely possible that he did, but the Malfoy name is worth a lot less these days, Harry, and the Malfoy fortune is considerably smaller than when we were at school. I'd say he got the job because of his exposure to the Dark Arts."

"For those of us who haven't read every book ever written, would you mind filling in the gap of how your mind went from _Dark Arts _to _Good Candidate for Head Unspeakable?_"

Hermione gave him a pitying look.

"Really, Harry, sometimes I forget just how deep your prejudices lie. I would have thought the connection obvious. Just because Malfoy's a bastard-"

and here Harry snorted with amusement, because Hermione managed to make even her curses sound oddly eloquent-

"doesn't mean he's not good at anything. He was a decent potion maker when we were in school, but my guess is that it's what he learned at home that made him a good choice. Dark Arts are far more deal with far more of the complexities of the human condition than everyday magic does; it's what makes the Unforgiveables so efficient. And Malfoy Manor was full of Dark objects, and he was in the Death Eaters to boot. I bet it's why Rookwood rose so high in the ranks of the Department of Mysteries, too; they had connections and wealth, but even those can only get you so far when you're an Unspeakable. No, it's knowledge that department needs-did you know that the Unspeakables have the highest employment rate of Ravenclaws compared to any other field profession?-and knowledge they had."

"Sometimes I forget how brilliant you are," Harry said, shaking his head. "But that still doesn't make Malfoy a good choice for Head Unspeakable. It doesn't make him trustworthy."

Hermione shrugged. "That's true," she conceded. "But I don't think he would try anything. It goes against all his self-preservation instincts. Anyway, I thought you'd like to know. Doesn't really matter, Department of Mysteries is so far down you'll probably never see him."

Harry grimaced, but accepted that she was probably right.

"Come on, Harry, if I'd known telling you would have ruined our lunch I wouldn't have done so."

And with that Harry threw his hands up in mock defeat. "You're right, you're right, Miss-or is it Mrs, now-Brightest-Witch-of-Her-Age." Here Hermione glared at him, eyes sparking with half teasing irritation. "You didn't come to lunch for me to dwell on old Hogwarts rivalries. Tell me what's new in the Department of Magical Creatures, then; a good Auror takes interest in all subject areas of the law."

"Harry, you can fool the public all you'd like, but you'll never convince myself or Ron that you enjoy paperwork and reports and research as much as you love being in the field," she said, affecting a pompous expression.

"I was unaware that I had invited Percy to lunch-" Harry replied, glancing around the office. "Where has my dear Hermione gone?"

She smacked his arm with a quill in retaliation. "And that," she continued, "would break our rules regarding no discussion of work during lunch hours." Here Harry heaved a great sigh, waving her away with a hand as if to concede a second defeat. Having taken this as a sign to proceed with a topic of conversation that she deemed acceptable, Hermione began to fill him in on the activities of the Weasleys in the weeks that he'd been absent, and Harry smiled.

* * *

A/N: Right, so writing a multi-chapter fic is proving a little bit harder than first anticipated. This is my first attempt at writing arcing plots, so bear with me. I'm halfway through chapter 3 at the moment, so anyone waiting on that shouldn't be waiting too long. If anyone wants to beta this fic, that would be great-PM me. Also working on another multi-chapter fic idea; may put it on hold, may write it now. Depends on what my muse decides for me. I love you all, thanks for reading!

FAMV

***Oh my God, I am so sorry about the mishap-I accidentally uploaded chapter 1 twice! Silly me. :P Please have a free internet cookie to make up for my inability to use a computer. Chapter 3 will probably be up by the end of the day-first Draco chapter!


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